[nysbirds-l] Jan. 28 Freeport Pelagic Results - Record Common Murre Count!
Saturday’s trip out of Freeport, NY was a big success with both great weather and great birds. Seas were running about 2 feet with winds less than 15 knots for most of the day, eventually building only up to 3 feet. The winds and waves started to pick up quite a bit in the afternoon as forecast, but we had planned our route to make sure we put this on our tail so the ride was comfortable all day. On the way out, before we reached the inlet, I thought I spotted a “BLACK” BRANT, a subspecies from the West Coast. I took some long distance Hail Mary photographs and sure enough that’s what it was. We turned around to try to find it but it must have wandered into the mass of its eastern cousins and blended in with the crowd. If you’re birding the area, check the Brant flocks. Once we cleared the inlet we quickly began finding numbers of RAZORBILLS. They seemed a bit skittish and didn’t allow real close approach, but we often had several small flocks in the air at once and there were plenty of birds to study. Ditto for the return trip with streams of birds very close to the beach. Some of their nervousness might be explained by a PEREGRINE FALCON we found about a mile or so offshore. We’ve had good numbers of this species in the past but our count of 481 was exceptional. Further offshore we started to pick up COMMON MURRES, mostly in ones and twos. With the calm seas they were visible from a long way off. We destroyed our previous record (which I believe was also a New York state record) of 49 birds and came up with a final total of 86. Unlike other years nearly all of them were in basic plumage. Were these mostly young birds? We don’t know, but it’s one of those things that keep pelagic trips interesting. We got to about 16 miles offshore. We picked up some DOVEKIES in these more distant waters, mostly birds in flight though we had one sitting on the water for a little bit. It is unusual to have this species this close to shore on our January trips, but water temperatures are much higher than usual and I think they are finding food closer than they normally do. Throughout the day we were given a good show by the BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES, and many pixels were killed by the photographers on this dynamic little gull species. An amazing sight was watching one that had grabbed a piece of our beef suet chum getting dragged across the water by a Herring Gull that had grabbed the other end. Nearly all the birds were adults with just one 1st cycle bird making a brief appearance. The chum at the back of the boat also pulled in two ICELAND GULLS, though they didn’t stay with us long, and the usual NORTHERN GANNET show which also caused the filling of photographers’ cards. All in all, it was a great day to be at sea. Here are the totals from outside of the inlet: Long-tailed Duck- 225+ Common Eider- 250+ Surf Scoter - 2 White-winged Scoter - 8 Black Scoter- 3 Surf/Black Scoter - 32 Red-breasted Merganser - 40 Red-throated Loon - 23 Common Loon - 26 Northern Gannet - 200+ Peregrine - 1 BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE - 29 (incl. a single 1st-basic) Bonaparte's Gull- 12 American Herring Gull - 700 ICELAND GULL- 2 (ad and 1st-basic) Great Black-backed Gull - 75 DOVEKIE - 12 COMMON MURRE- 86 (3 breeding, 1 heavy molt) RAZORBILL - 481 (incl. one bird well inside the inlet) large alcid sp. - 52 Harbor Porpoise - 4+ Short-beaked Common Dolphin - 5+ dolphin sp. - 25+ whale sp. - 3 (spouts looked Fin Whale like, consistent with elusive behavior) And here are a few notable birds from inside the Jones inlet and along the Loop boat channel. BLACK BRANT - 1 (photographed, details to NYSARC) HARLEQUIN DUCK - 3 Double-crested Cormorant - 11 Great Cormorant - 1 Great Blue Heron - 21 Peregrine Falcon - 2 We currently do not have any trips scheduled for Freeport this year, but several people aboard have requested that we try to run a few more for 2012. We’ll talk to the captain to see if we can pull something off, perhaps in early September for summer species like White-faced, Leach’s, and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, Bridled Terns, Long-tailed Jaegers, etc. and maybe a November trip which produced birds like Red Phalarope, Northern Fulmar, and good numbers of Manx and Great Shearwaters out of Delaware this year. Stay tuned! -PAG -- *Paul A. Guris See Life Paulagics PO Box 161 Green Lane, PA 18054 215-234-6805 www.paulagics.com paulagics@gmail.com i...@paulagics.com* -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1)
[nysbirds-l] Jan. 28 Freeport Pelagic Results - Record Common Murre Count!
Saturday’s trip out of Freeport, NY was a big success with both great weather and great birds. Seas were running about 2 feet with winds less than 15 knots for most of the day, eventually building only up to 3 feet. The winds and waves started to pick up quite a bit in the afternoon as forecast, but we had planned our route to make sure we put this on our tail so the ride was comfortable all day. On the way out, before we reached the inlet, I thought I spotted a “BLACK” BRANT, a subspecies from the West Coast. I took some long distance Hail Mary photographs and sure enough that’s what it was. We turned around to try to find it but it must have wandered into the mass of its eastern cousins and blended in with the crowd. If you’re birding the area, check the Brant flocks. Once we cleared the inlet we quickly began finding numbers of RAZORBILLS. They seemed a bit skittish and didn’t allow real close approach, but we often had several small flocks in the air at once and there were plenty of birds to study. Ditto for the return trip with streams of birds very close to the beach. Some of their nervousness might be explained by a PEREGRINE FALCON we found about a mile or so offshore. We’ve had good numbers of this species in the past but our count of 481 was exceptional. Further offshore we started to pick up COMMON MURRES, mostly in ones and twos. With the calm seas they were visible from a long way off. We destroyed our previous record (which I believe was also a New York state record) of 49 birds and came up with a final total of 86. Unlike other years nearly all of them were in basic plumage. Were these mostly young birds? We don’t know, but it’s one of those things that keep pelagic trips interesting. We got to about 16 miles offshore. We picked up some DOVEKIES in these more distant waters, mostly birds in flight though we had one sitting on the water for a little bit. It is unusual to have this species this close to shore on our January trips, but water temperatures are much higher than usual and I think they are finding food closer than they normally do. Throughout the day we were given a good show by the BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKES, and many pixels were killed by the photographers on this dynamic little gull species. An amazing sight was watching one that had grabbed a piece of our beef suet chum getting dragged across the water by a Herring Gull that had grabbed the other end. Nearly all the birds were adults with just one 1st cycle bird making a brief appearance. The chum at the back of the boat also pulled in two ICELAND GULLS, though they didn’t stay with us long, and the usual NORTHERN GANNET show which also caused the filling of photographers’ cards. All in all, it was a great day to be at sea. Here are the totals from outside of the inlet: Long-tailed Duck- 225+ Common Eider- 250+ Surf Scoter - 2 White-winged Scoter - 8 Black Scoter- 3 Surf/Black Scoter - 32 Red-breasted Merganser - 40 Red-throated Loon - 23 Common Loon - 26 Northern Gannet - 200+ Peregrine - 1 BLACK-LEGGED KITTIWAKE - 29 (incl. a single 1st-basic) Bonaparte's Gull- 12 American Herring Gull - 700 ICELAND GULL- 2 (ad and 1st-basic) Great Black-backed Gull - 75 DOVEKIE - 12 COMMON MURRE- 86 (3 breeding, 1 heavy molt) RAZORBILL - 481 (incl. one bird well inside the inlet) large alcid sp. - 52 Harbor Porpoise - 4+ Short-beaked Common Dolphin - 5+ dolphin sp. - 25+ whale sp. - 3 (spouts looked Fin Whale like, consistent with elusive behavior) And here are a few notable birds from inside the Jones inlet and along the Loop boat channel. BLACK BRANT - 1 (photographed, details to NYSARC) HARLEQUIN DUCK - 3 Double-crested Cormorant - 11 Great Cormorant - 1 Great Blue Heron - 21 Peregrine Falcon - 2 We currently do not have any trips scheduled for Freeport this year, but several people aboard have requested that we try to run a few more for 2012. We’ll talk to the captain to see if we can pull something off, perhaps in early September for summer species like White-faced, Leach’s, and Band-rumped Storm-Petrels, Bridled Terns, Long-tailed Jaegers, etc. and maybe a November trip which produced birds like Red Phalarope, Northern Fulmar, and good numbers of Manx and Great Shearwaters out of Delaware this year. Stay tuned! -PAG -- *Paul A. Guris See Life Paulagics PO Box 161 Green Lane, PA 18054 215-234-6805 www.paulagics.com paulagics@gmail.com i...@paulagics.com* -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1)
